Paper Work
by ByeByeBriar
Summary: Gaara's first step towards becoming Kazekage didn't involve a fight, but rather a lot of ink and paper.


**Hello! Here is a quick Gaara centered one-shot set in the Time Skip. Enjoy! Review! *Puppy eyes* Please?**

Gaara no Subaku stood in front of the building in Suna that handle all the paper work and wondered why there was such a strong smell of fear coming out of the place. He had just returned from his own and was dropping off the paperwork. The smell got stronger as Gaara went inside but curiously he didn't see any people just piles of paperwork that lined that halls so high they reached the ceiling. Gaara followed the smell to a door that was promptly thrown opened to reveal a small man obviously about to collapse.

_So that was the source of the smell. _ Gaara thought. The man froze as he spotted Gaara and Gaara felt Shukaku stir. He cursed silently and tried to force the demon back. Gaara found that paperwork or anything that involved long boring tasks that didn't involve blood, fighting or sometimes sex could literally put the demon to sleep. It was the reason he had volunteered to take care of any and all paperwork he could get his hands on much to everyone on his team's confusion. The man eyes went from Gaara's face down to the paperwork in his hands and tears formed in the corners of his eyes.

_Pathetic. _Shukaku muttered as he realized the man would be about as interesting to kill as a sack of flour, and went back to sleep. Gaara hid a sigh of relief and held out the paperwork. The man actually started to cry.

"Over there," he practically shouted, waving towards one of the huge piles of paper work. "Third pile from the door. Fill out in triplicate, sign, originals must go to T-5 in the files don't forget to sign at bottom and top." The man seemed more to be talking to himself then Gaara, but he followed the instructions anyway. He didn't have anything better to do. It was actually depressing to watch the small man whose name apparently was Jinzo judging by the plate over the door he kept running in and out of trying to do any work with people handing him more every five minutes. It was slowly reducing Jinzo into a shaking incoherent mess. Gaara did not consider himself empathic even after his defeat at Naruto's hand and changing his view of life. He still had trouble sharing feelings with others, but when yet another ninja was demanding that his paperwork be done immediately Gaara held out his hands.

"Give it to me." He ordered quietly. The ninja eyes went wide with fear. He shoved the papers into Gaara's hand and fled. Gaara ignored the feeling of bitterness as he turned to Jinzo. The man looked about to faint, but then again he had looked that way for a good half an hour. "How do you process this?"

A crazy happy look appeared on Jinzo's face and he quickly directed him to check it for mistakes, copy it, and then file it in section C.

It took less then five minutes as the ninja's report was flawless and he found section C in the filing system pretty easily. Jinzo looked terrified when Gaara came back and asked him for more work. It was like he had forgotten Gaara was there, but then that crazy happy look came back on his face and he gave Gaara more paperwork. This happened several more times before Jinzo got use to his presences and simply handed him work as soon as he came back. Even with Gaara helping him Jinzo still became more and more distressed. He collapsed around eleven on the floor. Gaara watched the clerk push himself up enough to lean against a stack of papers before crouching next to him.

"You should rest." Gaara told the over-worked clerk. His tone was bland and without inflection. Temari had told him more than once that it was creepy, but Jinzo didn't seem to notice.

_Then again, I doubt he would notice if a sandstorm struck the city right now. _

"But if this isn't signed by Councilor Odo then..." Jinzo failed in his fight against exhaustion and passed out. Gaara moved away papers from a sofa and placed Jinzo on it. He took the paper from Jinzo's hand and left the building. It was a plea for immediate supplies for the hospital. Gaara knew that Odo would most likely be in session with the council right now as night was the only time meetings could be conducted in the desert's heat this time of year.

Councilor Odo was indeed in session with the rest of the council one of the guards informed Gaara glaring at him suspiciously. Gaara ignored them all and leaned against one of the walls. He had dealt with worse though the smell of blood coming from the guard's kunai was annoying him. The guard had obviously not cleaned them well enough and Shukaku had noticed.

The doors to the meeting room swung open as the councilors poured out. Gaara wasted no time and went straight for Odo. The man nearly jumped away from Gaara, but held his ground. Gaara felt eyes boring into him and people with hands on their weapons. It was annoying him though the real probale was the faint scent of blood had awakened Shukaku.

_Come on, do it. Rub their blood into the walls. Break them so hard it hits the ceiling! _Shukaku squealed in his head. Gaara refused to admit that sounded tempting. He was a changed boy and he was going to _stay _that way.

"Councilor Odo, your signature." He said, holding out the piece of paper and a pen. Odo blinked and did nothing.

_Gouge out their eyes and strip the flesh off their bones!_

"There," Gaara pointed to the bottom of the page, tensing. Shukaku was starting to push for control. Odo took the paper and signed it with lighting speed. Gaara wasted no time in getting out of there. Shukaku was still shouting in his head as he returned to the Paperwork building and filed the request. Jinzo was still out cold on the sofa.

_Wring his neck. _Shukaku demanded, pissed he hadn't gotten to kill the councilors.

_No_. Gaara told him and dived into the paperwork. Shukaku complained for maybe an hour before leaving Gaara alone. The countless files of missions, reports, bills, and contracts boring the demon to tears. Gaara didn't bother to stop after that and was surprised when he saw the sun start to rise.

If you had met Jinzo three months ago you would have found a slightly over worked ninja that was stuck doing paper work after his chakra system had been shredded by a Hyuga.

"Damn Hyuga." He would mutter every time he told the story.

Then the Suna had attacked Konoha. Jinzo had not participated in the battle, but the after affects he was feeling the most. At first the rest of the lands had put a ban on using Suna's ninja until they were sure that another Ninja War would break out between Konoha and Suna. Then with Suna barely surviving the mission requests had started to come back and all able ninjas were ordered to take any and all missions, leaving only Jinzo to handle to the paperwork. It wasn't helping that the position of Kazekage was still empty. The council was still fighting over who would get the position as it usually went to the eldest child of the previous Kazekage, but both Kankuro and Temari had turned down the offer. The youngest child Gaara, demon holder wasn't even considered and no one else could agree on who it should be. Jinzo had held back the flood for about a day before it began to pile up at a rate that if it was clearly labeled 'do now or someone will die' it was ignored. Jinzo was now surviving on soldier pills and adrenaline for the last week. He couldn't remember if he had slept in the last few days at all or when he last had a solid night's rest.

With that last thought he bolted up from the sofa, panicking.

_Where was he? What had happened?_ The last thing he remembered was reading a immediate request for supplies in the hospital. His son was in the hospital along with many of his few friends, but the paper wasn't in his hand now. _Where was it and how had he gotten from the hall to the sofa?_

"There is fruit on the table." Jinzo snapped to attention and saw the demon Gaara sitting at his desk going through reports. Jinzo froze in fear and then remembered Gaara coming yesterday with yet more work for him. Jinzo was losing his mind at that point and started to cry, but then the demon had offered to help. The demon's presence usually would have scared Jinzo shitless, but he was far to stressed for it to even register. The demon got the work Jizo gave him done quickly and that was all he cared about at that moment, but why the hell was he still here?

"Whaaa..." Jinzo began to cough, his mouth was drier than the desert's sand.

"You collapsed last night and it is now around noon." Jinzo started to panic again. How much more work had piled up while he was sleeping?

"Why are you here?" The words came out sounding like someone was strangling a cat.

"I have nothing better to do." The demon replied in a bland tone, not look up from the reports. "If you do not eat you will only collapse again."

Jinzo shuffled slowly towards the bowl of apples and oranges that had somehow appeared on his desk, right next to a large stack of papers that hadn't been there before.

"Where did those come from?" he moaned.

"Over there," the demon waved to an actually empty place along the wall. "I did not now what to do with them so I placed them on the desk." Jinzo's jaw drop so low it was endanger of touching the floor.

"You did all that?" The demon nodded, filling out another report. "Thank you...thank you so much." He said with meaning.

The demon holder blinked. Once, twice, three times before muttering a 'you're welcome.' The red head pushed the chair back and walked over to Jinzo holding what looked like a promotion form.

"What do you do with this?" He asked and Jinzo swore he would never call Gaara no Subaku a demon again. Together they managed to halt the over flow of work and even reduce a little by the second day before getting flooded again. Gaara was fast, efficient and mostly silent, but Jinzo found out his real talent was getting papers signed. What took Jinzo hours of waiting and struggling took Gaara only a few minutes, it helped that most people were terrified of him and wanted to get rid of him as quickly as possible. Jinzo had also discovered that the ability not to need sleep was extremely useful and that Gaara was very dedicated to getting all of the paperwork finished. He hadn't even taken a break in the last week that Jinzo saw. Jinzo was now sure that at least half the rumors about him were lies and the other half exaggerated. Jinzo was farther than he had been from losing his mind, but he was still close to it and extremely snappy, irritable, and bossy because of it and the boy hadn't even tried to kill him once.

A real break came five days later when two of Jinzo's former helpers were released from hospital. They stared opened mouth at the amount of paper work that literally filled some of the rooms to the ceiling and nearly bolted when the saw Gaara.

"Why the hell is the demon here?!" one man hissed.

"Shut up," Jinzo replied. "He's helping and get your asses in motion." He then proceeded to dump more work on them in an hour then they had saw all last month. Gaara hadn't said anything, but he never forgot what Jinzo said.

_Is this what it feels like to be needed? _He asked himself. Pausing in filing yet another form, he realized he didn't know, but what ever this was he liked it.

"What the hell are you doing?" Kankuro demanded. Gaara looked up from a report he was processing to find his sister and brother standing in front of his desk. He knew they had been standing there for nearly five minutes, but hadn't bothered to look up.

"Paper work obviously." Kankuro just stared at him.

"Uh, Gaara...how long have you been here?" Temari asked hesitantly, the siblings hadn't seen each other in a little over a month because of the constant missions Temari and Kankuro had been on. Gaara had to think about that though he didn't stop writing.

"Three weeks." He said, returning to the report.

"Why?" Kankuro demanded to know. He knew that Gaara enjoyed doing paperwork. After his defeat by Naruto Gaara had told them it help shut up Shukaku, but this was going over board.

"I did not have anything else to do."

"Gaara-san!" a man barreled into the room, forcing Temari and Kankuro to jump out of the way. "This needs to be signed by Councilor Odo and Councilor Maku! You might have trouble with Councilor Odo."

"Gaara-_san_?" Kankuro choked out. Jinzo whirled around and gave a short hurried bow to Kankuro and Temari before facing Gaara again.

"And there's another stack of forms from the hospital about this months expenses!" Temari inched away from the man who shouted the last bit hysterically.

"Place them on the desk." Gaara pointed to an open spot on his desk. "I will take care of them in a moment."

"Um...Gaara we have actually have a mission." Temari said. "Kankuro and I were sent to get you."

"No!" Jinzo shouted. He looked like someone had sentenced him to eternal damnation. "I need him!"

Gaara felt a warm sort of prideful feeling spread out from his heart.

"How long is the mission?" The red head asked, finishing the report.

"Two weeks tops." Kankuro said. "But we need to leave now. Baki's waiting for us at the east gate."

If Jinzo looked like he had been sentenced to damnation before it was nothing compared to the look on his face now.

"I will be back." He told Jinzo as he handed him the report he had just finished. It did little to comfort the man. "I am sure that you, Sano and Naki can handle this until I return." Jinzo looked a little brighter and Gaara left the building quickly. He could feel Kankuro and Temari staring at him.

"What?" He asked. They didn't respond at first so he asked again.

"It's nothing," Temari said.

"Obviously not." Gaara replied.

"Dude, it's just we've never seen you try to comfort somebody before." Kankuro said, bluntly. "What's was the guy problem anyway? He looked like he was about to kill himself."

"Overworked."

"And you just decided to help him out?" Temari prodded.

"He needed it and I was bored." The conversation was cut off as they arrived to the gate and saw Baki. They immediately took off to deal with the squads of Iwa soldiers that had been reported to be testing their border.

Jinzo slumped down into his chair. The day was technically over, but since Gaara had departed his workload had tripled. Pulling up another stack of files towards him, he stared at the first one, wish whole heartily that Gaara was there to help.

"Now if only we had a Kazekage as good at paperwork as him things would be so much better." Jinzo muttered to himself.


End file.
